Canadian Anglican Michael Ingham on Rowan Williams

Transcript

Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to The Religion Report, and the second part of our two-part series on homosexuality and the churches.

This week, we're focusing on the worldwide Anglican communion, which has been teetering on the edge of schism, as liberals and conservatives battle over issues like the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of gay priests.

We'll hear from a Canadian bishop whose own position on the issue has dramatically shifted. He's moved from being a conservative right to the head of the liberal camp.It's with the voice of Rowan Williams that we begin.

Rowan Williams: Once we recognise God's great secret that we are all meant to be God's sons and daughters, we can't avoid the call the see one another differently. No-one can be written off; no group, no nation, no minority can just be a scapegoat to resolve our fears and uncertainties. And this is what unsettles our loyalties, conservative or liberal: we have to learn to be human, alongside all sorts of others, living in Jesus' company. I have to live in a community that is more than just the gathering of those who happen to agree with me, because I need also to be surprised and challenged. If all we have to offer is a Jesus who makes sense to me and people like me, we have no saving truth to give.

Stephen Crittenden: Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury preaching at his enthronement service in Canterbury Cathedral last week.

Even before his enthronement, conservative evangelical groups were calling on Rowan Williams to resign, because he had ordained a gay man living in a relationship. In the mainstream media he's been described as a liberal, a moderniser, and even as a heretic, and there have been suggestions that around 150 parishes in Britain might break away, looking to the oversight of another, more conservative bishop - someone like Sydney's Archbishop Dr Peter Jensen, perhaps. Dr Jensen has just returned from a speaking tour in Britain, during which he visited some of those parishes.

Meanwhile, Rowan Williams has repeatedly indicated that he will accept the orthodox Anglican position on homosexuality, so perhaps he's more of a traditionalist than he has been painted.

In Canada, meanwhile, the Anglican Bishop of New Westminster in Vancouver, Michael Ingham, found himself at the centre of an international storm last year, when he agreed to bless same-sex unions after his synod repeatedly voted in favour of the idea.

Michael Ingham spoke to me from his home in Vancouver, and I began by asking why homosexuality has suddenly become the maypole around which all the mainline churches are dancing.

Michael Ingham: I don't know really why this has become such a do-or-die issue for some people in the church, and I think I would want to emphasise that it's not for everyone. It seems to be a sort of tip-of-the-iceberg issue, behind which there are a whole lot of other things, perhaps, battles won and lost but not yet conceded throughout the 20th century. In the last century we had a number of issues that were controversial and divisive: the ordination of women being the most recent. But before that, we had the remarriage of divorced persons. We've also had quite substantial discussions around the admission of children to communion who are baptised but not yet confirmed, which has provoked a whole lot of reflection on our theology of baptism. So there've actually been a lot of questions, and conservative and progressive camps have formed around them, and at least in this context for most of the last sixty years, the conservative position has not won the day. And now I think what we're seeing is the internationalisation of conservative movements within the church, which are largely funded by people who've lost the argument in their own churches in the West.

Stephen Crittenden: In all of those issues that you cited there, you were really talking about issues that divide liberals and conservatives within the churches. What about developments in the wider society?

Michael Ingham: Well in Canada, for example, homosexuality was decriminalised over thirty years ago, and so we've seen actually since the Second World War in this country, the emergence of gay and lesbian people into the mainstream of society - and in fact the churches are about the last institutions from which they are in any sense prohibited. Within the Canadian church, the Anglican Church of Canada, there's been study and discussion and commissions and papers and debates and so on for over twenty-five years. So one cannot say, actually, that the church here has rushed headlong into anything. In Vancouver, where I live, there's a significant gay and lesbian population, it's a part of North America to which people migrate, or immigrate from across North America, or from other parts of the world. And some of the people who've come to live here are gay and lesbian people, and significant numbers are members of our churches. And they have come to seek a better life for themselves, to find acceptance and welcome in the Christian church, and many of them are fleeing religious bigotry and persecution that they've experienced in other places.

Stephen Crittenden: I wonder whether, if you take the line of a conservative evangelical group like Reform - which is strongly opposed to liberalisation, and which says any act of homosexual activity at all for Christians is contrary to the word of God - whether in places in the world like Vancouver or Sydney, that a message like that is just not going to go over with the wider community any more.

Michael Ingham: Well, if something is condemned by God, and if it is against God's word, then of course they're absolutely right, the church in Vancouver shouldn't be doing that, or the church anywhere else. In that sense, the word of God is not culturally limited. But therein lies the argument. There are many people, people of good conscience in my diocese, who hold to that point of view, and we respect that point of view - it is certainly the one held by the greater majority of Anglicans throughout the world. But in our biblical and theological studies here, we have come to a different position. We do not believe this is, in fact, condemned by God or by Scripture. And so when one's theological conviction around that fundamental point beings to dissolve, then the rest of the argument loses its force.

Stephen Crittenden: Bishop Ingham, I've never really understood whether blessing same-sex unions was something that you were personally in favour of doing, something you were driving in your diocese, or something that you were pushed into over time, perhaps a little reluctantly, pushed into by your synod. Because there was a delay of - was it five years?

Michael Ingham: Yes, that's right. I had been on my own journey on this question. I will confess openly that my position through most of my life has been quite conservative and traditional. But I've been ordained now for almost thirty years, and in my pastoral ministry, of course, I've had to deal with all sorts and conditions of people. And I have, in ministering to and among gay and lesbian people, begun to lose my own fears and anxieties about them as a community and individuals, and they have witnessed to me of their deep and abiding love for God through Jesus Christ in a way that has caused me to question my own convictions on this. The diocese here has really approached this question primarily as a pastoral one, not as a doctrinal one. We do not see any doctrine of the church at stake here, certainly no central or core doctrine of the church. We're really asking ourselves: how do we minister with the compassion of God to these people in our midst? They are given the choice, mostly by the church, of promiscuity or loneliness throughout their lives. Their denial of their loves and their relationships and their intimacies leaves most gay and lesbian people in an impossible position of Hobson's Choice - between promiscuity or loneliness - and I think what we see ourselves doing here is a moral thing, of encouraging and supporting permanent faithful and lifelong commitment among people who will have the same obligations, and all of the same challenges, that heterosexual people have in their relationships. And I do support that. I think it is appropriate, and a moral thing to do.

Stephen Crittenden: It's estimated there are issues about the inclusiveness of the Gospel, ultimately about whether Christ died for everybody, also possibly you know there's the great speech about the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, the great religious novel of the 19th century, that really raises the question of whether the Gospel, in the end, is a nasty joke on people - you know, that this freedom that's been won for us is actually possibly all far too difficult for most people.

Michael Ingham: I think I have a real problem with some doctrines of creation that I hear from some people in the church, which are narrow and exclusivist, and appear in fact not to be full doctrines of creation. They appear to exclude rather large numbers of humanity, and I cannot myself believe in a God who creates all human beings in the divine image, and then offers salvation only to heterosexuals. My understanding of Scripture is that it witnesses to a sovereign lord of all creation who loves all unconditionally, and I believe in a saviour who died for all, and the sacrifice of Our Lord on the cross is not simply for heterosexual people, it is for homosexual people.

Stephen Crittenden: See Michael, if I can just pick up on this: I'm interested in the possibility that the issue of homosexuality, as it's emerged in the last few years in the churches, is actually a cover for a whole lot of other things, and that one of the things that it might be a cover for is an argument about whether Christ died for the whole world, or whether he just died for some - and even an argument, in the end, about whether possibly the secret message of the Gospels is that we're all saved.

Michael Ingham: I certainly think that it's God's will that we are all saved, and that that salvation is offered to everyone, regardless of their cultural or ethnic or gender background. I've spent a lot of time listening to people who are feeling left behind by this decision here, and I have a lot of sympathy for people who have difficulty with what we're proposing to do. There are a lot of issues behind us, and one gets the impression it's not simply about homosexuality. There are people who want to read Scripture in a highly prescriptive way, in a way that almost treats it as a kind of fax from heaven, a recipe book to be followed. And there are others, and I think this is really the greater part of the Christian tradition which sees Scripture as a revelation of God's word through Jesus Christ, a living word more than a written text. I mean, there's a watershed theological question there. There are other things, too: how generous can you stand God to be? Jesus stood in the tradition of enormous inclusivity, to the point where he caused great scandal among the religiously orthodox of his day. And I think we're fighting the same kind of concern here, and discerning a rise in Anglicanism throughout the world almost of what you might call Puritanism. It seems to me Puritanism breaks out in the Anglican tradition from time to time, and it's here again.

Stephen Crittenden: We haven't mentioned Rowan Williams yet. The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, was a conservative on this issue. Is Rowan Williams likely to be able to lead the church through this crisis, perhaps even break new ground - or, because his position's different, are we now more likely in fact to see fragmentation?

Michael Ingham: I think Rowan's position is an extremely difficult one. He's inherited a church which has been deliberately divided by geopolitical forces that I've mentioned. And when you walk into a position like that, the options are very limited. My hope for the Anglican communion is that Rowan will be given time, perhaps by both his supporters and his opponents, to deepen and broaden this discussion and raise the level of debate from the sort of political mudslinging which so often it's become, to a much higher level of principle.

Stephen Crittenden: Could what you do in Vancouver influence whether that's going to happen?

Michael Ingham: He has come into his office at a point where we have reached a decision in which he could play no part, and I personally feel very badly for him around that, because I think the whole situation in the Anglican communion might have been different if Rowan had been around a little bit earlier.

Stephen Crittenden: In other words, you're going to proceed?

Michael Ingham: We are going to proceed, yes, I've already given my consent.

Stephen Crittenden: Well, what about the role of someone like our own Sydney Archbishop, Peter Jensen, who's been on a speaking tour in Britain over the last few weeks? He may well have in fact encountered no special mood in favour of his kind of hardline Bible-inspired position in Britain, perhaps because Britain's a First World nation, which leads to the question of the strong support for the hardline Bible position amongst Anglican bishops in Asia and Africa. I wonder whether the real culture war isn't a culture war between North and South, between First World and Third World, that the culture war in the West is already lost.

Michael Ingham: Well, I've heard that theory, it's popular in certain academic circles that this is a North-South split. I don't actually subscribe to that, for a number of reasons. One is that of course you have a vigorous debate going on in the North - in the so-called North - to start with, and there is also a similar debate going on in the global South. The position, for example, of the Anglican Church in South Africa would be quite different from the position -

Stephen Crittenden: In Kenya, or Uganda.

Michael Ingham: Kenya or Uganda particularly. And I've been involved, for some years now, in the international councils of communion, and everywhere I go people from so-called developing nations, global-style churches, come to me and say "we're quietly supportive, we support you privately, it's difficult for us to support you publicly". So I don't myself buy the north-south split thing. I think there is another interesting dimension. A number of the bishops around the world have had what you might call a formal theological education, but many have had what you would call a Bible College education. The two steams of education are quite different, and I'm not being judgmental here at all -

Stephen Crittenden: How are they different?

Michael Ingham: They're different in the sense that Bible Colleges tend to focus primarily on Biblical exegesis. And theological education is broader, in the sense that it looks at systematic questions, it looks at the relationship of systems of ideas to others; it looks much more closely at historical theology and how the church has developed its understanding of doctrine through this century. One can find conservatives and liberals, of course, in both schools, though again it's not the simple black-and-white issue there. But how the debate is continued, how it's carried on, is quite different in the two schools.

Stephen Crittenden: What's your view of the Peter Jensen idea of floating bishops who come in and say to conservatives in, say, the diocese of New Westminster, or conservatives in Britain, "I'm willing to be your flying bishop, you don't have to give your allegiance to this liberal bishop that you don't agree with or find that you can't agree with".

Michael Ingham: The Canadian House of Bishops almost uniformly is opposed to flying bishops. We don't see the issue of homosexuality as an issue to divide the church, or one on which to stake the historic episcopate. Flying bishops, especially if they're kind of intrusively inserted into other dioceses without permission, end up undermining the role of bishops throughout the world.

Stephen Crittenden: But in the case of someone like Peter Jensen, you've got somebody who, although he is a bishop, is quite open about saying that he doesn't really hold with the Episcopal structures of the church.

Michael Ingham: Right. And that I think is illustrative of the fact that the debate now seems to have moved from faith to order. It's moved from issues of sexuality to issues of the order and governance of the church. I think what is being proposed, in terms of flying bishops who would gather like-minded congregations under their wing, irrespective of geographic territory, is far more of an innovation, and far more radically destructive of the church, than anything that's been proposed around gay and lesbian people and their pastoral care. Because what you end up doing, is creating a bishop for every theological party.

Stephen Crittenden: A bishop for every theological issue.

Michael Ingham: And for every issue. So you'd almost have to have a website called Rentabishop.com, which people could sign up for the bishop of their choice on every issue, from hymn books to liturgies to the blessing of pets and animals. You'd also have to have one, I suppose, for people who are opposed to flying bishops. It becomes absurd, and if you follow it right through the structure of the church, it would mean that for every group in every parish who didn't agree with the Rector, or the incumbent, you'd have to have an alternate incumbent, a Rector, to cater to that particular group. And so you begin to see the kind of nonsense of this fragmentation. Anglicanism has always historically tolerated a fairly high level of diversity on theological and doctrinal issues. We've not forced one another into narrow confessional stances, but we have said that the order of the church is important to us, and this shift of the kind of political focus from sexuality to flying bishops, signals a much more disturbing development, I think.

Stephen Crittenden: Thank you for joining us on The Religion Report, it's been great talking to you.

Michael Ingham: You're very welcome, Stephen - and greetings from the northern hemisphere to the south.

Stephen Crittenden: Bishop Michael Ingham, the Anglican Bishop of New Westminster in Vancouver in Canada. And I should also say there that Peter Jensen has repeatedly said that he's not offering alternative or "flying bishop" episcopal oversight.

Guests

Michael Ingham

Anglican Bishop of New Westminster, Canada

Publications

Title

Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings

Author

Eugene F. Rogers

Publisher

Blackwell (London 2002)

Description

ISBN 0631212779

Title

Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God

Author

Eugene F. Rogers

Publisher

Blackwell (London 1999)

Description

ISBN 0631210709

The Religion Report is an archived program which is no longer broadcast